‘Death Stranding 2: On The Beach’ is an action-adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world, taking place in Mexico and Australia. The protagonist Sam Porter Bridges is a delivery man sending cargo to survivors scattered across large distances. With the aid of his companions, Sam will embark on a journey to save the world from an impending threat to humanity’s existence.
The game is rated M18 for violence.
Players control Sam from a third-person perspective to explore various locales on foot, via vehicles or other traversal means, primarily to undertake and complete cargo delivery missions. They can also procure gear to aid progression, such as equipping mechanical body frames and advanced weapons for better traversal and combat, and earning experience through completing missions to enhance Sam’s physical abilities. Cinematic scenes intersperse gameplay to progress the narrative.
When engaging in combat with human, robotic or supernatural enemies, Sam will employ the use of melee weapons, firearms and grenades. Blood splatters and stains surfaces when characters are attacked, but there are no details of injury shown. Stronger scenes of violence occur in cinematic scenes, which depict humanoid characters being tortured and burned by flamethrowers, having the hands and limbs severed, and the body being dismembered in half. Other sequences imply characters being shot point-blank or shooting themselves in the head in an act of suicide, or feature locations with corpses strewn about, including a beach littered with the dead bodies of babies. Overall, the violence can be contained under the M18 rating, which allows for “depictions of realistic violence, such as killing, maiming or causing other serious injury to humanoid characters”.
In one surreal dream sequence, a man is seen embracing another, with tentacles emerging from their mouths and entwining together, before the sequence ends abruptly. The dialogue contains the use of the expletive “f**k” and its variants, as well as crude words such as “bitch”, “damn” and “shit”.